I fully understand the history of NASA and the various private contractors who have worked for them, it’s that this is contracting out one of NASA’s core missions. My issue here isn’t about private contractors working for the federal government in a support role, but that it basically amounts to the end of the public space program.
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That strikes me as quite an exaggeration and I’m sure all of the government employees who still do work for NASA would probably dispute you on this.
At least they won’t rely anymore to Russia.
Boeing’s move from Seattle to Chicago made it a participant in the zero-sum game of state-shopping. Then there’s the assembly plant in “right to work” state, South Carolina. Boeing is a willing participant in the race to the bottom of the pay scale for the “middle” class in the US. They had a fine, patriotic heritage and they blew it.
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He’s the President, man… he’s GOT to say stuff like that. It’s like telling your kids they’re the cutest widdle guys in the whole wide world.
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Agree completely. This space stuff has nowt to do with the commercial airplanes bit, though. I suspect all the work for this will end up in Huntsville, AL.
“What’s the difference between Soyuz and the Space Shuttle?”
“The Shuttle is a highly compex marvel of state-of-the-art aerospace engineering. The Soyuz is flying into space.”
…there’s also that rumour that the Shuttle used to be called Savior. Because whenever people saw it the first time, their first reaction was “Jesus Christ!”.
When you want a robust, relatively simple and (after some inevitable trials and tribulations, Komarov could tell stories) tech, leave it on Russians.
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The russians aren’t politically reliable-- the SLS will provide an alternative.
Who is? The more alternatives, the better. I don’t care what’s painted on the rockets as long as there’s traffic.
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… and it’s relatively safe traffic.
I think proven and reliable-tech is better than new and high-tech. I think that’s what’s made the difference between early Soyuz, which had a(n un)safety record comparable to Apollo and the Shuttle, and later Soyuz.
I am too tired now to do it myself, but what about a back-of-the-envelope calculation of number of accidents per person per traveled mile, for both the Shuttle and the Apollo (and others) and compare it with the safety record of highways?
537,114,016 miles through 134 flights.
848 crew.
14 lost.
~1 death per 32.5 billion astronaut miles.
Suspect cars are worse.
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Apollo lost 3 astronauts, 12 missions, 6 went to the moon, about 500k miles round trip?
So conservatively, 9 million astronaut miles, one death per 3 million miles? Probably much less.
Soyuz has only lost 4 cosmonauts, none since 1971. 2 flights out of 130.
Edit: forgot the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz mission. Stick another 12 astronauts and some more miles on the numbers.
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Well, should have thought of that before they started heckling the only guy with a ride.
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I’m thinking it might also be that the guy with the ride sees that our car is broke down and now feels that he can get away with being a dick without consequences.
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Yes, how dare he act like the US.
Shuttle may have been safer if you go by miles travelled, but you don’t have a 1.5% chance of getting blown up every time you get in a car. Nor have 40% of all cars ever built ended their service lives in deadly crashes.
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Quick! Don’t move a muscle. Something somewhere is wrong!
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The amount of mishaps is a bit too low for a reliable answer…
(Should I take a wire brush and phosphoric acid and remove some of the rust on my stat-fu and calculate the plusminus? Or will somebody else, who does such calculations less rarely, take up on this task? 
)
Another way to look at the numbers is “four percent of all people to ever fly on a space shuttle died in shuttle accidents.” Those kinds of numbers are unacceptable for military test pilots, let alone a supposedly mature transportation technology.
It has been said with some pride that the shuttle was “the most complex machine ever built.” I’m not sure if that’s strictly true or not but “extremely complicated” doesn’t often bode well for “reliability.”
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